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by Stealth Noodle
Summary: FFVI Against his better judgment, Shadow connects with Locke before and after the end of the world.


**Disclaimer**: Final Fantasy VI is the property of Square Enix. I just drunk-dial it on weeknights.

**Notes**: Written for **ukefied** at Dreamwidth for FF Exchange (on AO3). The rating's for semi-explicit sex; there's some violence, too, but nothing terribly graphic.

* * *

He was glad to see you and didn't haggle over the price; perhaps the novelty is what has kept you longer than you meant to stay, longer than you know it is wise to remain in the company of one Imperial turncoat searching for another. You shouldn't know this much about your employers, but Sabin bought you a pint in Kohlingen and chatted with you as if you were a friend. Remind him, someday, that you would slit his throat at the behest of a higher bidder.

"She turned pink," he told you, "and just... took off. Whoosh!" Sabin, in your brief acquaintance, has always been prone to sweeping gestures. You saw no reason to mention that you saw the creature blaze past, or that you remained in Kohlingen in expectation of being paid to pursue her.

"Never seen anything like it. And Locke—that's him over there with the bandana—he's been really worked up about it. This is his hometown, too, right, and it's not really my place to tell you the details, but he's got some bad history here..."

All of your history is bad. Death follows close at your heels; you should have learned sooner how to sever yourself from the present before it slips behind you. You should be severing yourself now. Why haven't you?

You should have left them in Jidoor, where there is never a shortage of wealthy clients seeking to shorten the path to an inheritance. You should leave tomorrow. With them you have uneasy dreams, and you would hate to think that you remain out of something as foolish as curiosity.

_(She asked you when you began to suspect, but your tongue was tied too tightly to confess that she was all that ever intrigued you, that you were too busy wondering at her kindness to wonder at the occasional irruption of impossibility. If she had taken flight before you, you might have wondered only what you did to deserve to see it.)_

They are heading north, where there is nothing for you. They give you uneasy dreams. Leave.

* * *

Interceptor nuzzles your hand in the dark. This tension is familiar to him, so he has been poised and alert since the party halted to make camp. You could gather your possessions and be gone in a matter of seconds, leaving neither trace nor apology. You could just as easily leave at dawn. There is no reason not to rest tonight, except that your dreams leave you shaking.

_(She left when you weren't looking, in the small hours after exhaustion overcame you. Her hand was cold and stiff in yours when you woke.)_

Rest, then, without sleeping. Scratching Interceptor behind the ears calms him, and he pads quietly after you to the edge of the camp. Together you are ghosts, wrapped in black that drinks rather than reflects the moonlight.

Locke, solid and reflective, sits on a broad rock not far from Celes's tent, fiddling with his dagger. By day his gaze has fixed fretfully on her as often as the sky, but he is a fool to think that she requires his aid. She looks at him with more perplexity than admiration; he sees brittle frost where he should see ice running hard and deep. Today she froze a rock wasp solid and shattered it with her sword.

_(She chilled rags in her hands and draped them over your forehead during your fever, winked at you on sultry summer nights as frost bloomed over your drink.)_

It isn't worth your time to consider their interactions, but sometimes there are long gaps with nothing to kill, during which your employers speak to fill the silence. You could ignore them, but the world is caught in the inexorable jaws of change, and you would be a fool not to pay attention to the teeth.

To whom are you justifying yourself?

With a touch you bid Interceptor tread cautiously, then slip ahead through leaves and twigs toward the deeper shadows of the trees. Something cracks beneath your foot, perhaps intentionally; you cannot trust yourself tonight. _Leave._

Locke turns, dagger flashing in his hand. Interceptor growls and would spring if not for your gesture. His tone is wary: "What do you want?"

An unwelcome question in a mood like yours, and never one you're inclined to answer beyond the context of financial compensation. "You're on edge."

"Yeah, a guy gets a little nervous when there's an assassin sneaking up on him."

You shrug. "Your reflexes are sharp. If I meant to kill you, I'd start with poison."

After an uncertain moment, he laughs. "Gotta give you credit for honesty. I guess Sabin's an okay judge of character after all." And with this Locke relaxes his grip on his weapon, leaving himself vulnerable. May you never understand what is wrong with these people.

"So why are you up?" he asks. "Can't sleep?"

_(There was a time when you slept only because her breathing filled the silence of his.)_

If you leave now, you might reach Jidoor by dawn, but traveling this road by night is a pointless risk. Interceptor sits at your feet, flicks his ears, and yawns.

You crouch and extend your hand. "Show me your dagger."

Locke shrugs and obliges, gripping the handle as if he means to slice fruit or pry open a lid.

_(On your first heist, he took the hostages, because any fool could look at your face and see your reluctance to kill. But it was your knife that buried itself in the passenger who tried to play hero against him.)_

To his credit, Locke doesn't flinch when you set your hand over his. His fingers are strong and callused beneath your gloves. "You don't aim to kill," you tell him, turning the dagger in his hand, refolding his grip for greater force, shorter range. By the time you draw a knife, range should no longer be a consideration. "You brandish, or you disable and escape. You think like a thief."

"Treasure hunter."

Let this stand; names matter. _(When you had no name, she gave you hers, and you threw it away.)_

"Regardless, you can protect nothing this way." Now he flinches. "You obey your emotions, and they make you weak."

Locke clenches his hand and frowns, then shakes you off in order to sheathe the dagger. You have disquieted him. Good. After a deep breath, he says, "You're _wrong_," with the categorical conviction of one who cannot explain why.

You have won; you have no need to win; you should sleep; you should leave. Instead you fail to resist the impulse to say, "She doesn't need it." She doesn't need you. She doesn't need men with long shadows dragging her down, letting her believe that she can shine brightly enough against the dark.

What the hell is wrong with you?

Locke falls quiet for a moment, though his face is noisy with tension. "I promised," he says at last, stubbornly.

_(The ring is still wedged in the crack in the wall, for all you know.)_

"And what the hell do you know, anyway?" he continues, more annoyed now than defensive. "You're only here because we let Sabin carry the gil pouch."

It's about time someone remembered this. "You no longer want my services?"

"Hey, I didn't say that. We can use as much help as we can get in Zozo."

Zozo loves visitors; they provide a common target. You have no reason to draw the diffuse aggression of the city down on yourself.

_(He used to say that Zozo kept pieces of her children so that they could never entirely leave her, that she was more jealous than gravity, but he needed to justify the loss of his eye. Because you left entire lives elsewhere, she will never take you back.)_

Locke tilts backward to address the stars, letting stray hairs escape his bandana. "I wonder why Terra took off for a place like that, anyway. Maybe that's where she's from. I mean, it doesn't seem like her kind of place, but when things happen like... like whatever the hell happened to her, all you really want is to go home."

This is too absurd to let pass without comment. "Not always."

He laughs. "Where're you from?"

You neither answer nor refuse to answer, only stare impassively and wait for him to retract the question.

"Fine, keep your air of mystery." His dismissive gesture passes too near Interceptor and elicits a warning growl. From a safer spot on his stone, Locke asks, "Does that dog really eat people?"

"Not all in one sitting."

It takes him a moment, but he laughs again. He does not, however, return to his original position. "You're a strange guy," he says, his tone ambiguous. Then, abruptly, as if he needs to get the words out before he thinks better of them: "You know, it's really not fair. Everyone's a different person when they go back home, and you've all seen me. But Sabin ran off at Figaro, I sure hope Celes never ends up back where she was, and you want us to think you sprang fully formed from a dark alley or something."

You're not one of them. You've spent years ensuring that you'll never be part of anything again. _Leave._

"I'm like this every time I end up in Kohlingen. Why the hell do I keep coming back when I still can't fix it?"

You're still here. What the hell is wrong with you?

Locke swings his legs over the side of the stone opposite Interceptor, tossing over his shoulder, "Yeah, you don't care about any of this. I'm going to sleep. If anything tries to sneak into the camp tonight, your dog can eat it." He tacks a "G'night" on the end as he heads for his tent, presumably because he is too tired to remember his audience.

_(When you cut your hand with a paring knife, you refused to let her heal you, because home is where you bleed the most.)_

The stone is still warm when you sit on it. Interceptor rests his head on your knee. A pale flower grows in a cleft of the rock, disquieting you, but leave it be; if you tear it out by the roots, you will have to confront your motive.

You are tired and restless and in no fit state to wander. If you remain here in silence, you might sleep. Keep your hand on Interceptor's back, and you might not dream.

_(He left a piece of himself in Zozo. Does each fragment have its own ghost?)_

Remain another day, then, but not because you are any part of this. You would hate to think that the city still has power over you.

* * *

_(They could have left you. They were fools not to. No good has ever come to anyone who kept you close.)_

* * *

There isn't much to do after the end of the world.

The reckless momentum of heroism _(what the hell is wrong with you)_ ran out when you woke on a blighted beach with Interceptor whining and nuzzling your face. How he found you again is no greater mystery than how you survived the fall, and you have never been one to probe the inner workings of circumstance. You are alive, and as long as you are alive, you must move. That you have nowhere to go should not give you pause.

But there is nothing for you now. No one needs a killer in a world clogged with corpses.

_(If the girl is dead you can do nothing; if she is alive you should do nothing. The memory of the deck cracking open becomes the memory of her mouth when the wind stole her scream.)_

There is nowhere for you to go, yet you remain in motion, scavenging from ruins and selling your protection to travelers. You have nowhere to go. You have never had anywhere to go. Why are you troubled now?

Survival has been easier since you learned, from the borrowed corpses of Espers, how to walk silently above the ground, how to steal voices, how to close your wounds in a flash of light. Other spells you have less use for; why wound with ice pellets when you can kill with one clean strike, delivered in invisible silence?

_(She haunts every fire you light without flint.)_

There is nothing for you. Your connections have been severed, leaving you rootless and free again, yet you seek their remnants. A familiar physique, a glimpse of pale hair, a flash of color—anything is enough to lure you down alleys in pursuit of disappointment. You stalk inefficiently to prolong your uncertainty.

Every dream is uneasy now. They have left you stupid.

* * *

The world has drowned land and drained seas, swallowed flesh and vomited steel. Weapons you understand; they neither move nor change, and an ancient dagger is more constant than the ground beneath you. You can kill with it. You are good at killing.

_(But not the man you loved more than a brother, who never begged for anything but to die at your hands. You can never spill enough blood to wash away the lack of his.)_

You would dream of using it to kill Kefka, but your dreams are already too crowded to leave space for speculation. Perhaps he can no longer be killed. All you know for certain is that you would rather sleep in the wilderness than in civilization. The light of Kefka's wrath does not shine on what is already desolate, and more importantly, it is to the wilderness, the great living cauldron of the Veldt, that you have traced the legend of your dagger.

For weeks, sometimes, you have no company but Interceptor, but you survive. You always survive. Your life has ended more times than you care to count, but you have a talent for shedding whatever death has grabbed as you flee. If you are fortunate, someday there will be nothing left of you but an amnesiac husk.

Why does this disquiet you?

The Veldt extends in every direction to the horizon, and you have no further clues. If the ruined earth means to exact years from you before surrendering its sharpest steel, then you mean to outlast it. Keep moving. You have no greater purpose for your time.

Nor do you have much purpose for the hunters whose paths occasionally intersect yours. This one is fending off a fat serpentine thing with too many legs and feelers and teeth, a creature whose name you do not know but whose venom you prefer to avoid. He has not seen you. You would take no further notice of him if his movements were not so familiar.

_(Years later you would still recognize the sound of their footsteps, the shapes of their bodies in the dark.)_

He is without his bandana and his usual context, but you know him. The jaws of change have once again gotten Locke stuck in their teeth.

While he is doing a capable enough job against the creature, he hasn't noticed yet that another is rippling toward him from behind. The part of you that resists involvement hasn't found its voice before your shuriken is lodged in the base of the beast's neck.

Interceptor lunges to ensure that the thrashings of its body are only death throes. Startled, Locke turns without first making sure that the creature he has been fighting will not rise again. He stares, slack-jawed. As you send another shuriken spinning past his torso into the creature's face, you hope that he can sense your irritation.

"You," he says hoarsely, punctuated by the sound of Interceptor tearing loose a chunk of flesh. "You're alive?"

There was a moment on the beach when you doubted; you've heard that ghosts live unaware in echoes, and the Phantom Train has every reason to deny you passage. But your heart pounded and your lungs burned and your body ached, and you knew you were alive when you vomited sea water.

"You're lucky to be," you reply. "You were careless."

You have splashed cold water on his awe. Locke scowls and sheathes his dagger as he closes the gap between you, saying, "Hey, I knew it was there! I was just busy with the other one."

He stops so near that he could strike or embrace you. His arms twitch as if he can't decide which would be less advisable.

When you say nothing, because you have no idea what to say, Locke stares at you until his expression softens. "What are you doing here? Where have you been? Have you found anyone else?" Not "have you seen" or "have you looked for"; there's nothing more obnoxious than a correct assumption. He feeds his momentum with names: "Celes? Terra? Edgar?"

He will continue until you stop him. "No one."

A heavy sigh escapes him. "I don't know where any of them are. I can't even get anyone to help me look, since everyone's either busy looking for the people they lost or just too depressed to care." He shakes his head but fails to dislodge the desperation: "What are you looking for?"

Nothing, because you can never have it again. "A dagger."

"Anything I'd like?" Against the bleak intensity in his eyes he pits a tone as bright as a throat full of coals. Here are two acquaintances meeting in a field, enjoying a bit of banter. Never mind the apocalypse.

"It's for killing."

"Ah." Locke scratches the back of his head, where his bandana should be, and adds, "I'm looking for something that does sort of the opposite."

Nothing destroyed can ever be rebuilt, just built over with something different. Even the light that seals your wounds leaves scars. He must know that, in this corpse of a world, so don't waste your breath reminding him. "Another girl?"

He huffs. "It's not like that. This is—this is _the_ girl." Uncertainty laces his words, but he is on firmer ground with "I promised."

If you were not yourself, you would laugh. "You make too many promises."

"And I'm going to keep them all. This one's taken years, but I have a chance now." He does laugh, but with a weary hollowness that you would expect of yourself. Behind him, Interceptor pulls more meat from the creature's bones. "Gotta look on the bright side of the end of the world."

You have no desire to respond, and Locke seems to have nothing more to say on the issue. When he tries to laugh again, nothing comes of it but shaking. His eyes fix on the ground as he asks in a strained voice, "What if they're all dead?"

"Then they're dead."

He breathes loudly through his nose, then clenches his fists against his legs. "I couldn't hold on. I grabbed her hand, but I couldn't hold on. I watched her fall."

_(Holding on didn't stop her from falling.)_

Trembling suggests that he is on the brink of an emotional freefall. For all you know, you're the first person he's held a conversation with in months. "You waste your time wondering," you point out. "If they're alive, you have no way to find them."

Making a game effort at a laugh, he looks up. "I'd expect you to be good at tracking people down."

"Business has been slow. I'm getting rusty."

Now his laughter is almost genuine, and his hand shakes only slightly as he suddenly clasps your shoulder. Sabin used to clap you on the back; otherwise it has been a decade since anyone touched you with impunity. You've left clumsy drunks bleeding for less.

_(He trembled like a sheet in a storm, clung to your sleeve, coughed bright blood over your chest. Home is where you bleed the most.)_

"I thought," Locke says, then pauses to lick his lips and clear the croak from his throat. "When I woke up, I thought I was the only one left alive."

So did you, but you refuse to dwell on the moments when you were horrified to be alone.

"And then I thought they—but if you're okay, maybe they're all okay." This logic seems to mollify him, at least enough for his grip on your shoulder to ease. He raises his head with a smile that gives up before it reaches his eyes, bracing himself for you to wrest away. Interceptor approaches without menace, muzzle stained a wetter black, poised for violence only if you will it.

You should leave. Instead you set your hand briefly on Locke's arm—awkwardly, trying to remember how long to squeeze and how much pressure to apply—and after an uncertain moment he laughs until he coughs. "You brooding bastard," he says, grinning, "you better not pretend you haven't been lonely, too."

Already he is emerging, charred and changed but not consumed, from the furnace of his emotions. You do not know how. Inside you are nothing but paper, and any spark you fail to extinguish will reduce you to ash. You will have nothing left with which to start over.

Locke is still talking, still touching. "Sometimes when I'm asking around for tips, I just babble like an idiot. I talk to myself, too, out in the wild." He inclines his head toward Interceptor. "Maybe I should get a dog so I don't feel so crazy doing it. Where'd you get yours?"

_(You saw her eyes in Interceptor's when you failed to talk your way through her death, when the ghosts inside you began to steal your sleep, when you woke in a dead world with the taste of rot in your mouth.)_

"Years ago," you reply, as if this answers the question.

He laughs again. "Fair enough. There's nothing new in a world like this, just old things brought back." His bright eyes catch and hold yours. "So if I want a future, I've gotta make my own. That's what I'm doing now."

You run not because you want a future but because the past will finish tearing you apart when it catches you. What would you run toward if you had nothing to run from?

Locke's voice is low, intent, challenging: "Is that what you're doing?"

Leave or don't leave, but shut him up either way. Your hand curls over his to peel it from your shoulder. Your skin tenses in anticipation of cold.

He shuts up. Leave or don't leave, but don't hesitate. Your skin is tense enough to split. His lips are parted, his chest rising and falling rapidly. They have roused your ghosts. They have made you stupid.

"Hey," says Locke. Something trembles under his voice. "You keep your mouth shut about that boat ride, and I promise not to tell anyone that you didn't just walk away."

_(You kissed him against the wall of the pub where you celebrated your first big haul, and you didn't care who saw; she made the elder choke by arguing that you couldn't possibly still be an outsider after all the time you'd spent inside her.)_

There is nothing new in this world, only old things clawing their way back, dead things digging themselves up, sealed things splitting open inside. They have ruined you. Don't bother telling yourself that you should walk away when your hands are already on him.

He needs this, and you don't; otherwise you wouldn't. Tell yourself that, instead.

_("Stay there," he said, and tackled you atop a sack of gil.)_

Your back comes up against one of the sparse, fan-shaped trees that provide the only break in the Veldt's plains. Locke stops touching in order to shrug off his pack and peel off his fingerless gloves. When your own hands are bare, you find them paler than you remember, with veins straining against the surface. You shouldn't be so eager to bleed. You shouldn't be eager.

_("Hold still," she said, and made your legs tremble.)_

The pressure of Locke's hips makes your hands fumble at your belt. You're both idiots and you're grinding against him regardless, forgetting how to breathe.

Interceptor growls long and low. Locke hesitates, trousers half undone, and says, "Uh. Is he going to watch?"

To a guard dog, the unusual is a threat, and you rarely have the need even to take care of yourself. At your gesture Interceptor lies down, still glaring vigilantly.

Locke mutters, "Oh, what the hell," and lets his trousers fall to his ankles. Yours join them.

He has never struck you as a sensible person, but he's sensible enough not to reach for your mask. Instead he grasps at your torso, bunching up as much fabric as he can, seeking skin beneath. The flesh around your scars ripples at the unfamiliar. If your face were bare, the sense of exposure would be too much.

One of his hands is between you, holding you together as you thrust against each other. Your hands are restless on his skin. This is too much—the hot breath, the friction, the way he groans—you are already lost in it. Breathe and let go.

Locke finishes soon after with a grunt, then takes the liberty of collapsing against you. At Interceptor's growl he hastens back upright.

"Yeah," he says, still short of breath, "I needed that." With a smile that is almost relaxed, he adds, "You too?"

Long ago you decided that all you needed was to survive, and all this required was money and a clear head. How are you still alive, then, when the latter has eluded you for a year, and the former is growing more evasive? You reach for your trousers without moving in any way that might be construed as a nod.

As you straighten back up, Locke fishes a handkerchief from his pocket and presses it into your palm. His hand lingers a moment against yours.

"You're going to run off now," he says without rancor, and this time you do nod. He shrugs and puts himself roughly back in order before settling in at the base of the tree. As you piece yourself back together _(Why are you still shaking?)_, he continues, "That's fine. Me, I'm going to find the next clue, and then I'm going to keep that promise. And then I'll find them all. They're alive." He caps this obnoxious certainty with a grin, which fades slowly as he rests his arms behind his head.

When you continue not to contribute to the conversation, Locke adds, "So you go find what you're looking for, too, okay?" He yawns. "Not just the dagger, I mean."

Glower at him while you fasten your gloves, but he's already slipping into in a post-orgasmic doze. For you there is only adrenaline. You can't remember when you last felt so awake.

_(You have never found solace in sleep. When you close your eyes, you become a chamber for echoes.)_

Death is always behind you, always scrabbling at your heels, always knocking between your heartbeats. You run and you sever, but it will catch you someday, regardless. You have forgotten how to sever cleanly. What the hell is wrong with you?

Leave, but you're still entangled. You are a fool to think that you have ever not been. Leave and they will find you. Leave and you will let yourself be found. When you burn, it will be because you couldn't stop circling sparks.

Interceptor whines and paws at your leg. Out of habit you count your gil, then scratch behind his ears before making up the difference from Locke's pouch.

They will find you, but keep moving. You have a dagger to find.


End file.
